Garden of Evil (27 page)

Jim pressed the medallion as hard as he could between finger and thumb. At the same time, Ba'al gripped his right hand even more forcefully, and again he began to feel that chilly infusion of power rising up his arm. This time, though, it was very much stronger and very much colder – so cold that it made him shake.

The crowd of students started to sing, in a strange high harmony, part devotional and part despair, as if a choir of thousands were falling together from hundreds of feet in the air. Jim thought:
that was what it must have sounded like, when God dismissed all of the angels who had displeased Him, and they fell from heaven
.

In his mind's eye, he suddenly saw a man's face – a swarthy, Middle-Eastern-looking face, unshaven, turning toward him as if he had disturbed him out of his sleep. Then another face, and then another. Then a whole flickering array of faces, men and women and children, all of them looking as if they had just been woken up. The flickering became faster and faster, until the faces were nothing but a blur.

The students' singing rose higher and higher, up to a piercing, sustained scream. Special Class Two had joined in the singing, although Bethany and Santana and Jim's father were standing silent. All the same, their faces were raised toward Ba'al, and their eyes were glistening with gratitude. Ba'al had given them their lives back, after all.

Only Ricky looked at all resentful, and he kept glancing at Jim as if to say,
What are you doing, man
?
Are you sure you know what you're doing? This goat-person might have brought me back to life, but then I shouldn't have been killed in the first place.

The flickering of faces abruptly stopped, as if a film had run through its spool, and was simply going
flap, flap, flap
, while the screen remained blank.

Ba'al released Jim's hand, and said, ‘
It is done. The curse of centuries has been lifted. The dead
have been returned to us
.'

The Reverend Silence laid his hand on Jim's shoulder. ‘You have done very well, Mr Rook. Now – if I may have my medallion back?'

Jim turned around, and said, ‘
Jesus
!'

The Reverend Silence was still dressed in white, but his face had changed dramatically. His skull had narrowed, his eyes had become slanted, and his nose was curved and beak-like. Two long fangs curved out from underneath his upper lip, and from in between these fangs a forked tongue-tip flicked out.

‘Did you not guess who I really am – not once?' he asked. His voice hadn't altered, although now he sounded even more mocking.

‘You're a
demon
,' said Jim. ‘I don't have any idea which one.'

‘Of course, only
you
can see me in this shape,' said the Reverend Silence. ‘Oh – and my lord and master, Ba'al. I am Sammael, Lilith's lover. Why do you think I have devoted myself for so many centuries to reversing the curse that God put on her? She defied God and chose to stay with me, as an equal, and the mother of so many of my children, rather than return to Adam as a servant.'

‘Sammael? The Angel of Death?'

‘Well, that is what the Jews called me. I was once God's executioner. But I refused to carry out God's curse on Lilith, and kill my own children.'

Jim could faintly hear shouting in the distance, on the far side of the campus. Bethany came up to him and linked her arm through his.

‘It's all over, Daddy. You did it. We should go.'

The Reverend Silence grinned at her, and his forked tongue licked his lips. ‘You have a wise daughter, Mr Rook.'

Jim turned around. The shouting was growing louder, and he was sure that he could hear screaming, too. A ripple went through the crowds of students, and then a moan, as if they were all beginning to realize that something was wrong.

‘What's happening?' he demanded. ‘I thought we were giving these kids everything they wanted!'

‘
Perhaps we were deceiving you
,' said a deep voice, close behind him. It was Ba'al. ‘
Perhaps you should have studied your scriptures more attentively. Sammael is the Angel of Death, but Ba'al – Ba'al is the Master of Lies.
'

It laughed, a harsh, humorless laugh, and then it dragged its hood back over its head, so that its face was hidden.

‘What have you done?' Jim shouted at it. ‘What the
hell
have you done?'

‘
Hell is the right word
,' Ba'al replied. ‘
But I have done nothing. It needed
you
to do this. If man has a worse enemy than God, it is man himself.
'

With that, gray smoke began to pour out of it, and blow away eastward on the wind.

‘Stop!' Jim screamed. ‘
Stop
!' But within a few seconds, Ba'al had turned completely to smoke, and twisted off into the sky.

The shouting and screaming was much louder now, and suddenly the students all around them began to run, like a herd of cattle that gets spooked by wild dogs. Most of them ran across the forecourt toward the back of the college buildings, but some of them zigzagged across the parking lot and ran down the hill toward the tennis courts, and the road beyond.

Jim turned to face the Reverend Silence again, trembling with anger at his betrayal, and his own stupidity.

‘We have to stop this,' he said. ‘I don't know what's happening here, but we have to stop it.'

Dr Ehrlichman pushed his way over to them and pulled at the Reverend Silence's sleeve. To Dr Ehrlichman, of course, without Jim's spiritual vision, the Reverend Silence still looked the same as he had before, and not like the demon Sammael.

‘What's happening? Why are my students all running away? You promised them Paradise, and so did I!'

But the Reverend Silence wrenched his sleeve free and said, ‘
What
? What did you expect? Who in their right mind thinks they can have everything they want, for nothing? What sane person thinks that they deserve Paradise?'

‘Then tell me what is going on here, you charlatan,' said Dr Ehrlichman.

Jim smelled smoke, and it wasn't just the lingering smoke from Ba'al's departure. He suddenly saw orange flames around the side of the college buildings, in the direction of the sports stadium, and dense black smoke began to rise up into the sky.

Bethany tugged at his arm again and said, ‘Daddy, we really should go!'

‘She is right,
Señor
Rook,' said Santana, anxiously. Students were running in all directions now. ‘
Es hora
para que nos vayamos – y tan rápidamente como sea possible!
It's time for us to go, as quickly as possible!'

William Rook came up, looking confused. ‘I don't understand, Jim! I'm real now, aren't I? I'm not a ghost! This isn't a nightmare, is it? Tell me this isn't a nightmare, Jim! Tell me I'm real!'

At the same time, Simon Silence came gliding up to appear behind his father's right shoulder. He was smiling, but his face had become completely reptilian. Even his eyes had turned yellow, with black vertical slits instead of irises.

Jim understood who he was now,
what
he was, what he had been all along, ever since he had joined Special Class Two. Simon Silence was the serpent that Sammael had sent into the Garden of Eden to whisper into the ear of Eve, so that she would disobey God, and be exiled like Lilith. It was so chillingly obvious. Simon Silence had even given them apples – fruit from the tree of knowledge, and of memories that should have been forgotten.

‘Well done, Mr Rook,' he said, with a nod of his head. ‘You now have everything your heart desired, and so do we.'

Over toward the sports stadium, the smoke was piling up high into the afternoon sky, and now Jim could see that the eucalyptus trees were ablaze, with their tall trunks crackling and fiery leaves whirling up into the air.

Joe Chang and Jordy Brown came up to Jim, with most of the rest of Special Class Two close behind them.

‘What are we supposed to do now, Mr Rook? Is this Paradise coming, or what? Don't look nothing like Paradise to us!'

Jim looked at the Reverend Silence and Simon Silence – Sammael and his Serpent – and said, ‘No, Joe. Paradise has been canceled, due to devious lying bastards. Get yourselves out of here, all of you, fast as you like. But go to my apartment, OK. Five-seven-seven-five-one Briarcliff, right at the top of North Van Ness.'

‘Why do you want us to do that, Mr Rook?'

‘I want to have a headcount, just to make sure that all of you are fit and well. And we need to talk about what's happened here, and what we're going to do next. So – go! Go on, get out of here, and tell everybody else in the class where to meet up.'

‘Yes, sir, Mr Rook!'

They didn't need telling twice. Urgently, they beckoned the class together and told them where they were going, and then they all ran off, past the science block, heading for the student parking lot.

‘We're leaving, too,' Jim told Bethany and Santana and Ricky. His father, Billy, looked bewildered, so Jim took hold of his hand and said, ‘Let's go, Dad. Everything's going to work out fine.'

‘What – you're not staying to taste the fruits of your achievement?' asked the Reverend Silence. ‘It's not every day that you get to witness an apocalypse of your own making!'

And Simon Silence, still leering over his father's shoulder, quoted his own essay on Paradise, word for word, ‘
For me Paradise will come on the day when the Fires are lit all over the world from one horizon to another and are stoked with Those Who Never Should Have Been.
'

‘Come on,' said Jim. He held Bethany's hand tight, and started to walk quickly back to where he had parked his car, with William Rook and Ricky and Santana following close behind him. Other cars were already screeching out of the parking lots, and speeding down the driveway toward the gates, but there were still hundreds of students milling in panic around the forecourt and the college buildings, and running down the slopes, screaming. Fires were breaking out everywhere. Jim heard a loud explosion, and glass splintering, and when he looked to his left he saw a dragon's tongue of fire leaping out of the window of the chemistry block, setting light to the branches of the overhanging junipers.

Off to the right, from the top of the slopes, he heard even more screaming, and it was then that he could see why all of the students were running. Over the crest of the slopes, like a tidal wave, came thousands of people, most of them wearing what looked like dirty white robes.
Thousands
– even more than the students – and they were pouring over the hilltop so fast that they were easily catching up with the students and overwhelming them, in the same way that a tidal wave would.

‘What in the name of God . . .?' said Ricky.

Jim said, ‘They're dead people, come back to life.'

‘Like zombies? Is that what you're talking about?
Zombies
? Get real, Jim! There's no such thing as zombies!'

They had reached the car. Jim took out his keys, dropped them, and then had to kneel down and scrabble under the car to find them again.

‘I'd make it snappy, if I was you, Jim,' said Ricky. ‘Whatever those people are, zombies or not, they're headin' this way with what you might call considerable momentum. And –
Jesus
!'

‘What?' said Jim, standing up. The torrent of white-robed figures was more than halfway down the slope toward them now. They came rushing in complete silence, and they were curiously out of focus, but there was no doubt about what was happening to the students who couldn't outrun them. They were engulfed, and disappeared, but after only a few seconds, out of the depths of the furiously running horde, body parts were flung up into the air – arms and legs and heads and torsos that looked like bloody kegs, and long surrealistic loops of intestine.

‘Get in the car!' Jim shouted, but none of them needed to be told. Bethany and Jim's father climbed into the front seats, while Ricky and Santana clambered into the back. Jim had just started up the engine when a young African-American student banged on the window and screamed, ‘
Take me with
you
!
Take me with you
!' so Ricky opened up the door and let him in.

‘They're tearing everybody into pieces, man!' babbled the student. ‘They're tearing them all into pieces! My girlfriend! My girlfriend! Shit, man! Maria! They tore her into pieces, right in front of my eyes!'

Jim gunned the Mercury's 7.1-liter engine. The white-robed figures were less than a hundred feet away now, and he didn't have the time or the space to U-turn, not without colliding into them head-on. They were running toward the car so fast that they appeared to grow larger and larger with every second. Although it was so difficult to focus on them clearly, Jim could see that some of their soiled white robes looked like djellabas, with pointed hoods, but most of them seemed to be dressed in shrouds, heavily stained with blood and bodily fluids and yellowed with age.

They weren't zombies – not like Haitian zombies, or the living dead out of movies. But they were dead people, tens of thousands of dead people, Lilith's children, and the children of Lilith's children, all brought back to life, and desperate for their revenge on Eve's children, who had taken the lives that should have been theirs.

Just as the first of them reached the car, and thumped into the driver's-side fender, Jim shifted it into reverse and backed down the driveway at nearly twenty-five miles an hour, with smoke billowing out of the tires.

The white-robed figures came running after them, but Jim managed to spin the wheel and slew the car around, with its suspension bucking and bouncing, so that it was facing toward the college gates.

As he put his foot down again, though, he saw that the road outside the college gates was crowded with thousands more white-robed figures, like a huge marathon race, and that they, too, were running relentlessly toward them.